We have the tax payer mid level, that was about 3.5 mil this previous season. Not worth the tax implications that come with that. I say let it go.
This just reminds me that Joe Ingles and James Johnson will be available in free agency and we cannot even try to sign either of them because we gave Meyers $10M and Crabbe $100M.
Even if we had let those guys go, we would have just had a the non-tax payer mid level, so around 6 mil/yr. CJ's near max kicks in this year effectively removing any capspace we would have had. Our one shot to spend $ was last summer, and we went all out.
We did have a choice of keeping CJ until this year without extending, it wouldn't cost us any more would it? And his cap hold would not be full $25M I think. I am a bit of an idiot when it comes to cap spaces though.
It's San Antonio. If they signed Leonard now, he would probably look like an NBA player there too. Dedmon was not that great at Orlando although he showed glimpses of talent. Could not believe they would rather pay Biyombo $17M. That and Noah are the worst contracts in the league.
Interesting thought. Quick was on radio yesterday mentioning how last summer, he was in constant touch with Dedmon's agent and baffled by how POR had 0 interest in the guy. Instead we put our eggs in the Ezeli basket after the Center market dried up, while Dedmon went to SA for peanuts and ended up as their starter.
Dedmon to San Antonio, JaVale McGee to Golden State. Could have had both for peanuts. But you need to have a culture where players will flourish, a coach who brings out every player's strengths while mitigating their weaknesses and enough vision to see what a player can be in your system.
Meyers started as an interior guy that would shoot an occasional '3'. After 5 years under Stotts, he is almost an exclusive perimeter player that shoots an occasional '2'. Not sure that is a place either of those other two would have flourished. Nurkic looks like he will because.....Nurkic.
The cap space was use it or lose it. We couldn't push to this summer. It was gone. And we didn't give Crabbe $100 million. It was $75 million. http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...-became-portland-trail-blazers-75-million-man
That's because Stotts was brought in to implement the offense that was used in Dallas... LMA was supposed to be his new Dirk, but LMA peaced out. Stotts wants that perimeter big man who can hit the three.... so they tried to make Meyers into that guy. It has backfired horribly.
I was kidding about Crabbe. That contract seems so unreasonably high it might have as well been $100'. Maybe I am stupid but we had these contracts that carried over to this season: Lillard $24.3M Aminu $7.3M Davis $6.6M Vonleh $2.7M McCollum $3.2M And scrub contracts of Quarterman, Connaughton plus $2M from Varejao deal. That sums up to about $50M tops. Of course that leaves you with a squad too short to compete but you can sign Harkless to the $8M he currently has, that is reasonable and get some of the players who don't necessarily make $20M a year. Our wage bill currently is $112M. Remove Crabbe ($18M), Meyers ($9.5M) and Turner ($16.7M) and you are down to about $68M. That's still $28M below current cap. Now the most important part: am I right that if we don't extend CJ last year but let him run the deal until this season, he will be RFA and his cap hold will be much lower than $25M and similar to his current deal? Which basically means we could use the remaining money that we have on new players and then sign him back anyway, going above the cap but perhaps still not reaching LT? Of course we would have still needed to fill the roster with someone other than Turner, Crabbe and Leonard but we could have gone for cheaper players or even get some expiring contracts from other teams to allow them to free up the cap space. Easier said than done and everything is easy in the hindsight but I feel like what I am suggesting here is not bonkers.
Interesting... so you let Crabbe, Harkless, and Leonard walk. You don't sign Turner. Now what? What would you have done differently? Keep in mind that the cap space is gone, and now you have no bench. You just let a bunch of the young talent that you developed walk away for nothing. So how do you restock the stores? How do you stay competitive?
